While Zalman notebook coolers are famed for their near silent cooling, and NZXT have ferocious cooling powers. When you get right down to it though, these laptop coolers, no matter how great they might be they are ultimaley all very similar.

When it comes to varying the design of laptop coolers, Cooler Master quite simply got things right. Some designs have moveable fans to get cooling where it is needed, one of their designs has 5 different height settings, their latest laptop cooler, the Cooler Master Storm has seven colours of LED providing a minature light show to eminante from under your laptop.

I truly admire the fact that Cooler Master are not trying to compette with other brands on the most powerful or silent laptop cooler. Instead they are working hard to ensure that there is a laptop cooling solution, no matter what your needs are!

I think it is important to point out that while I do think Cooler Master do have the best laptop cooler brand, you might still find a silent Zalman, or a gaming NZXT much more more ideally suited to your needs.

This is the second release of Windows 7 to b released by microsoft since the Pre Beta was released in October.

You can view the full information on teh Windows 7 Beta 1 Release on the MIcrosoft Technet blog Here

This is great news for those lokoing for a slightly less cluttered and annoying version of Vista, as Windows 7 is rumoured to be much simpler and intuative compared to its ratehr overhyped predecessor, we can only hope Microsoft have learned from their previous mistakes on this score!

The Fit-PC an an astounding 10cm wide by 11cm long and only 3gm deep. In this box you have everything you need, from wireless capability to USB compatibility, all running on the latest version of Windows XP. This does actually seem to make it the worlds Smallest Windows XP compatible PC, all in a box that can be slipped into your pocket!

While I am not usually that impressed by gimmicks I was thinking of investing in one of these tiny PC’s, that was of course until I realised I would have to lug a power pack and monitor around with me. And the power cable for the monitor, and now I come to think about it a mouse and keyboard.

On second thoughts I might just get a new laptop.

Many people do not like to have their search information recorded, but lets face it, it’s not just the internet that does this.  Your local supermarket, be it Tescos or Walmart will be recording what you buy and when you buy it so it can send out advertising to you on the right day about the right products.

Personally I could not care any less if a company recorded information abotu what i bought, searched for or similar, I would prefer to have adverts relevant to me rather than an inbox full of, to put it bluntly, bullshit.

I find this move a hysterical response to an ‘internet phenomenon’ and that this is just anotehr example of nanny state behaviour appearing from the EU.  Many internet companies succeed becasue tehy can see that a certain number of people like certain things, if this information is removed or becomes unreliable the tax losses for governments nationwide will be pretty damn big as companies go under and new ones cannot start.

I use google keyword stats regularly so am more than well aware of how advert targetting is imperative to the survival of small business on the internet.

Of course once you have found out that windows live writer plugins exist you have to decide which ones to have, well these are in my opinion the most useful windows live writer plugins.

1) Portable Windows Live Writer – One of the major drawbacks of Windows Live Writer is that it requires an Install.  This plugin allows you to run Windows Live Writer anywhere off a USB stick.

2) Webcam Snapshot Plugin – The Webcam Snapshot Plug in for Windows Live Writer gives you a fantastic addition to your blog, allowing you to quickly take a shot of what you are doing and insert it directly into your blog.

3) Website Preview Tool – The Website Preview Plug in for Windows Live Writer is a great addition for any blog, allowing its readers to preview sites in a small thumbnail before deciding whether or not to click the link.

4) Multiple Tags Plugin – One of the drawbacks of Live Writer is its restriction on number of Tags that can be used, this plugin can remove this limit to help you structure your blog.

5) Windows Live Writer Backup – While this is not really a plugin, more a standalone tool, it does do a fantastic job of backing up your Windows Live Writer Blogs.  A Windows Live Writer Backup tool is essential to anyone who wants security incase of blog loss!

6) Windows Live Writer Video Embed – The Video Embed Plugin for Windows Live Writer is a great little tool from Scott is a Fool that allows you to embed videos in your blog, not only that but if you are uploading to a service that does not support embeded vidoes such as MSN Live Space then it will allow you to take a screenshot which will link directly to the video.

7) El Bruno Add Links – El Bruno Addlinks is one of those tools that you never realise how useful it can be till you use it.  This plugin for Window Live Writer simply has a pop-up list of links you have previously specified.  This is amazingly useful if you run several blogs and need to use certain links continuously!

Today however Samsung released information about their latest creation.  The Samsung 256GB Solid state Hard drive, release date set at eth end of the coming year and with upto 200mbps transfer rate you are looking at technology that while not quite as large capacity as regular hard drives is more dependable, smaller and more portable technology.

The release of this latest breed of flash device is fantastic news for many people, especially those in the digital photography and video lifestyle.  Giving huge amounts of data storage in a small compact and safe space!

This seems to be a specific stab at Intel when they announced an integrated graphics/processor chip, something that could increase PC Performance but may damage competition.

Nvidia recently slammed Intel for the move in an interview with their CEO, and it now seems like AMD (Owners of ATI) are also readying to defend themselves against Intel’s latest stab at controlling both markets.

The ‘AMD Game’ certifacte will be in two levels for two standards of quality, these are

AMD Game! – Minimum requirements are an AMD Athlon 5600+ X2 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics, and an AMD 770 chipset or Nvidia nForce 500 series chipset.

AMD Game Ultra – Minimum requirements are a Phenom X4 9650 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics, and an AMD 770 chipset.

Such specific marketing that excludes Intel products will be a clear move against the manufacturer.  Already several major Gaming PC makers have aligned to the standard, this includes Alienware, a huge name in the PC gaming market.

Laplink is a great little tool designed to ease the the transfer to a new PC by making an exact copy of your computer and moving it across onto your new system, allowing you to keep your settings, files and more without the tedious re-installing required when normally doing this.

If you want to enter the 25th anniversary of Laplink, get a free copy of Laplink and even Win a Free Laptop take a look Here!

But this post is not about CD DRM nor MP3 DRM.  It is about PC Games and Their Digital Rights Management Systems and WHY they are wrong.

Yesterday for instance I felt aq little nostalgic and went to play Rise of Legends.  I inserted the CD, pressed play and for my troubles was greeted with… nothing.

Three hours of browing support forums later I found that there was a fairly simple solution to my problem.  I merely had to reinstall windows and refrain from using any anti-virus software.  And the worst part is that the error I received was not caused by any part of the game itself, merely by its anti piracy measures.

And I am not the only person suffering, nor am is it the only game causing problems.  A Huge amount of Microsoft and Electronic Arts (EA) have become so obsessed with combating piracy that they are causing serious problems for gamers, causing a huge amount of them to boycott The games made by these manufacturers (I too am boycotting them, especially when they announced that two of EAs latest games would require you to insert the DVD every ten days and do an online authorisation or your account would be disabled, the fact they have even considered this is enough to make me stop buying their products)

So why do computer game manufacturers use these methods?

They think they are combating piracy.

To any computer games manufacturer out there let me point out several things.

Firstly, Anti-Piracy measures, inconvenience and annoy your regular gamer, in fact your CUSTOMER who you should be trying to please.

Secondly, Despite all your claims anti piracy measures are cracked within days of game release, so those that you are trying to prevent are actually suffering from less inconvenience than your customers.

Thirdly, As much as you like to, including money spent on DRM (USually tens of millions) should not be counted in the lost profits due to piracy scenarios.

Let me sum it up for you guys, more people are being driven to piracy by your measures than are drawn to it.  Hell the only way to get your games working sometimes is to download NO CD cracks, and once someone is introduced to this then downloading games is only a stones throw away.

Online Authorization for games is a mere inconvenience to gamers and easily circumnavigated by crackers.  It was something first used wide scale by Microsoft and was touted as making Windows XP uncrackable.  I think we all know how that turned out for them, Cracked before release i think the headlines stated.  Genius.

So what is my point?

I think DRM and anti piracy measures should be removed.

They hurt the customer base.

They cause next to no problems for Software Pirates.

They cause huge amounts of game errors.

They give companies huge amounts of bad publicity.
Sorry for the ramble but I am ever so slightly annoyed because I still want to play Rise of Legends but still cant due to a windows re-install and getting all my old programs back likely to take around one week.

It is spectacularly easy to transform Windows XP so it looks and acts like vista. The Easiest way to do it is to get a program such as WindowBlinds This has a free version available but using this may cause errors, it is way easier to shell out a rather mediocre $20.

once you have installed WIndowBlinds you can start the fun, download the Free Vista Transformation Pack Here And follow the Instruction.

Converting XP to look like Vista has several benefits. Firstly you get all of Vista’s sleek looks with none of its slow speeds, giving you what feels like a faster Vista, you also have none of the compatability issues of Vista, meaning you can use all your old games and software in a Vista style environment!

There is a downside though, many users have reported problems when trying to remove the Vista looks and revert to XP, there have been reports of DLL errors, these can be replaced if the worst comes to the worst, but it is an annoyance.

Overall I think this conversion is amazing, I now use it on one of my PCs and it runs smoother and faster than any Vista Machine I have ever used.